Free Survival in the Killing Fields by Haing Ngor Page B

incompetent. He takes civilians off the streets, gives them twenty-four hours of training, personally sees to it that
they’re given Buddha amulets to wear and sends them off to fight the North Vietnamese.’
    ‘What’s wrong with Buddha amulets?’ I said. ‘You’re Buddhist. I’m Buddhist.’
    ‘You work in the hospitals,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Do you see any proof that Buddha amulets can stop bullets from an AK-47?’ Under his fierce glare I dropped my eyes
and admitted that badly wounded soldiers with religious tattoos and charms came into the hospital all the time. ‘Lon Nol’s crazy,’ Kwil said earnestly. ‘I know. I’ve
followed him around. He’s going to get a lot of innocent people killed, and then he’s going to rely on the Americans for weapons and air strikes to keep the regime from falling. Take my
word for it, my friend – he’s stupid. Stupid, I tell you! Stupid! Stupid! He started a war but he will not be able to defend the country!’
    Sam Kwil got carried away sometimes – compared to him, I was as calm and reasonable as a monk – but his observations were almost always right. In Phnom Penh during the first years of
the war we saw American planes every day, flying in from their bases in South Vietnam and Thailand. Transports landed at the airport with supplies and advisers. Tactical fighters and bombers roared
off toward the horizon. If you didn’t know what the fighters were used for, you would think them beautiful, like little silver darts travelling incredibly fast and making a loud noise out of
proportion to their size. At night, sometimes, in Huoy’s apartment, the teacups rattled on the shelves and a sound came from far away like the ocean’s roar, only much lower in pitch and
barely audible – bombs from B-52s, exploding in the countryside. There were other planes. The Americans gave the Cambodians propeller-driven T-28 fighter-bombers and some transports. In
January 1971, the North Vietnamese blew up three quarters of the Cambodian air force’s planes at the airport, but the Americans sent in replacements.
    Though the North Vietnamese mounted occasional rocket and mortar attacks on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, the war became immediate and real for me on Pchum Ben, the Buddhist day of prayer for the
souls of our ancestors, in 1972. Huoy and I were sitting on the floor of a temple, praying with hundreds of people around us, when the explosion came. Everybody ran from the temple in a panic. Out
in the street someone told us that the Chhruoy Changwa Bridge had been blown up. This was a huge, ultramodern bridge across the Tonle Sap River at the northern end of the city, built with Japanese
aid. We usually called it the Japanese bridge. When we got near the river we could see that the middle spans had fallen down. There was nothing left but immense standing columns and a long stretch
of empty water between. Then automatic-rifle fire broke out in another direction, inside Phnom Penh, where guerrillas were attacking a government military position. The government soldiers
counterattacked, and the shooting went on for hours.
    The following day, the Lon Nol soldiers laid out the corpses of the North Vietnamese and stood over them like hunting trophies. The soldiers grinned proudly, as if they had successfully defended
Phnom Penh from the enemy. And when I saw their false pride I felt I finally understood what war is about. Men fight for glory or ideals, but the result is not glorious or idealistic. The main
result, besides the suffering, is that civilization is set back many years. Take the Japanese bridge as a practical example: when it was built, travel between Phnom Penh and north-central Cambodia
became much faster and easier than before. It was a great improvement. People like me could drive to the ruins of Angkor within hours instead of days. Merchants prospered from the new commerce. So
did farmers, who began to grow new crops for the Phnom Penh markets.